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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Contractor selected for Belgian LLW/ILW facility
Brussels-based construction group Besix announced that is has been chosen by the Belgian agency for radioactive waste management ONDRAF/NIRAS for construction of the country’s surface disposal facility for low- and intermediate-level short-lived nuclear waste in Dessel.
Mei-Ya Wang, Tsung-Kuang Yeh
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 2 | May 2017 | Pages 180-189
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1273014
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Hydrogen water chemistry (HWC), aiming at coolant chemistry improvement, has been adopted worldwide for mitigating intergranular stress corrosion cracking in operating boiling water reactors (BWRs). However, a conventional hydrogen injection system employed in this technology was designed to operate only at power levels >30% of the rated power or at coolant temperatures >232°C. This system is usually in an idle and standby mode during a start-up operation. The coolant in a BWR during a cold shutdown normally contains a relatively high level of dissolved oxygen from intrusion of atmospheric air. Accordingly, the structural materials in the primary coolant circuit (PCC) of a BWR could be exposed to a strongly oxidizing environment for a short period of time during a subsequent start-up operation. In this study, the computer code DEMACE was used to investigate the variations in redox species concentration and in electrochemical corrosion potential (ECP) of structural components in the PCC of a domestic BWR during start-up operations with HWC. Simulations were carried out for power levels ranging from 3.8% to 11.3% during start-up operations. Our analyses indicated that for selected power levels with steam present in the core, a higher power level would tend to promote a more oxidizing coolant environment and therefore lead to less HWC effectiveness on ECP reduction. At even lower power levels in the absence of steam, the effectiveness of HWC was more prominent. At a feedwater hydrogen concentration of merely 0.1 parts per million, significant ECP reductions in the PCC of the BWR were observed.